The XP Cap in Baldur's Gate or disabling it does nothing to stop a player from completing the main quest. It only harms those who want to complete as much of the game as possible.
This is not a multiplayer PvP where balance between different play styles would be more of concern.
@Bhaaldog - I think the point is that losing the "yay more EXP" feeling secondary to the cap is a harm.
I'm sympathetic to the person who said that the multiplayer experience could be affected without a cap, but I think those situations would be pretty rare, and they're not on the table at all at present.
There are also ways to limit multiplayer characters; when you set up the game you can set it so that characters don't keep their experience points when the game starts--so you won't be beginning the game with a character at level 40/40/40 as a Fighter/Mage/Cleric.
BGEE is an enhanced edition. A raised XP cap could very well be part of the enhancements and I am all in for it. Although, not everybody wants it so it should be an optional feature. Two things to consider with a raised XP cap is that characters in 2e were not intended advance as high as they can in TOB, and that classes require different amount of XP upon levelup. Max lvl in TOB is 40 and the XP cap appears to be set with fighters in mind, hitting lvl 40 with 8 000 000 XP (giving nice and round figures). Some other classes require much less XP than that to reach lvl 40, but the lvl 40 maximum forces their XP tables to be tweaked. This is already done in TOB by setting the XP for lvl 40 to 8 000 000 and not the "right" lower figure. Raising the XP cap beyond 8 000 000 would probably require further tweaking on some classes’ tables. Here is my suggestion on how it can be done:
XP cap at 10 000 000
Level cap at 50
XP progression tweak: In order to keep everybody within 50 lvl, the XP required to gain a lvl should be increased by 1,25 times from lvl 31 and up (applies to all classes). A bard will thus reach his max lvl (50) at 9 900 000 XP (needing 10 175 000 for lvl 51) while a wizard will reach his max lvl (35) at 9 843 750 XP (needing 10 312 500 for lvl 36). Both will gain XP up to 10 000 000 but none will be able to reach another lvl.
A raised (or lowered) XP cap should be an optional feature via a checkbox or slider at game start -we want to make everybody happy, right.
If it turns out that you're too powerful for any of the challenges in the game because you've gained too many levels, then that means one of two things: A) there's too much XP in the game to begin with; or the game's challenges themselves aren't challenging enough.
I disagree with this. An XP cap can enable pplayers to choose whether they complete sidequests or not. If you balance the XP and challenges such that players need to maximise their xp in order to get past the challenges, then essentially you are forcing them to complete all of the sidequests.
An XP cap can help to balance this out - those who want to complete all of the sidequests can do so while still gaining extra gold and items. Those who don't want to complete all the sidequests can still progress through the main plot.
Would i lost my free will to choice do or not a sidequest without XP cap? What?!
By the way this game is highly easy to play. Serious, a lot. If you disagree with me give a try to Tactics mod for BG2 from Weimer to see what i'm talking about.
I tend to make most of the side quests before i start to run the main quest after Naskhel Mines (except when i want to recruit someone from the cloakwood section), so with or without xp cap i always make everything on the game easy.
In fact most of the side quests challenges are meant to extremly low level parties, so after my 3° level, every side quest on the open areas become easy. BG2 had at least some difficult side quests for the start that we could choose to risk on early game or wait to do later at least.
Actually thanks to a member of this forum that i forget the name, to remove the XP Cap, 3 simple 2DA files are needed only, and taking in fact that by being an enhanced edition, most of the old BG2 features and content already exist in BG EE, the high levels (and spells) are well configurated, so i couldn't care less if they going to make a Cap removal official or not in BG EE.
By another side, remove the Cap on BG2 EE, or raise it to a level 50 (for people that like to make solo games for example) would be nice. Ok, now someone will say that lvl 50 is cheese... well become a god is also cheese in my opinion, and i like ToBs end anyway !
To resume, in BG EE, XP cap is useless, you have to edit the character or make 200 millions of gameplays with the same character to reach lvl 40 in BG EE. In BG2, maybe an update on the XP cap could be done as i believe the devs intent to make new adventures that would add more XP to the game.
As many dungeon masters that i know says, there's no high level in D&D that can't be challenged. Level 10? Throw werewolfs on him. Level 20? Throw a lich on him? Level 30? Throw Demongorgon avatar on him
Comments
This is not a multiplayer PvP where balance between different play styles would be more of concern.
I'm sympathetic to the person who said that the multiplayer experience could be affected without a cap, but I think those situations would be pretty rare, and they're not on the table at all at present.
XP cap at 10 000 000
Level cap at 50
XP progression tweak: In order to keep everybody within 50 lvl, the XP required to gain a lvl should be increased by 1,25 times from lvl 31 and up (applies to all classes). A bard will thus reach his max lvl (50) at 9 900 000 XP (needing 10 175 000 for lvl 51) while a wizard will reach his max lvl (35) at 9 843 750 XP (needing 10 312 500 for lvl 36). Both will gain XP up to 10 000 000 but none will be able to reach another lvl.
A raised (or lowered) XP cap should be an optional feature via a checkbox or slider at game start -we want to make everybody happy, right.
By the way this game is highly easy to play. Serious, a lot. If you disagree with me give a try to Tactics mod for BG2 from Weimer to see what i'm talking about.
I tend to make most of the side quests before i start to run the main quest after Naskhel Mines (except when i want to recruit someone from the cloakwood section), so with or without xp cap i always make everything on the game easy.
In fact most of the side quests challenges are meant to extremly low level parties, so after my 3° level, every side quest on the open areas become easy. BG2 had at least some difficult side quests for the start that we could choose to risk on early game or wait to do later at least.
Actually thanks to a member of this forum that i forget the name, to remove the XP Cap, 3 simple 2DA files are needed only, and taking in fact that by being an enhanced edition, most of the old BG2 features and content already exist in BG EE, the high levels (and spells) are well configurated, so i couldn't care less if they going to make a Cap removal official or not in BG EE.
By another side, remove the Cap on BG2 EE, or raise it to a level 50 (for people that like to make solo games for example) would be nice. Ok, now someone will say that lvl 50 is cheese... well become a god is also cheese in my opinion, and i like ToBs end anyway
To resume, in BG EE, XP cap is useless, you have to edit the character or make 200 millions of gameplays with the same character to reach lvl 40 in BG EE. In BG2, maybe an update on the XP cap could be done as i believe the devs intent to make new adventures that would add more XP to the game.
As many dungeon masters that i know says, there's no high level in D&D that can't be challenged. Level 10? Throw werewolfs on him. Level 20? Throw a lich on him? Level 30? Throw Demongorgon avatar on him